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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8685047" data-attributes="member: 82106">Honestly, I don't think TSR really ever had much of a 'product strategy', certainly not before the advent of Williams. Different people within TSR birthed various products, based on a variety of reasons and expediencies, and perhaps just plain rivalry, and TSR sold them. If a product sold, they kept selling it until it didn't sell anymore, and then probably someone would suggest a revised version.I mean, HAD THEIR BEEN A PLAN, then Basic and Advanced D&amp;D would almost surely have represented a pair of games which dovetailed cleanly together and where each one performed some sort of function within an overall product line. I think there were glimmerings of ideas of doing such things, but the company was really not organized or lead well enough to execute on a plan at all. Gary couldn't be bothered coming up with, or articulating, some product line going forward from the original game, so Holmes was off on his own somewhere creating Basic, which was a product that didn't really fit that well with what Gary was doing. I mean, maybe it would have, but Gary was too busy making up a whole new version of the game that didn't mesh with Eric's work at all. It would have made vastly more sense for Holmes work to have been a 1-3rd level intro to AD&amp;D. It would have made more sense if Moldvay's efforts had been directed that way as well, but he was off working in some 'other TSR' that apparently was in love with the original rules and didn't care about whatever Gary's TSR was doing! Honestly, I think all that kept the whole enterprise going for as long as it did was just the fact that there was so much low-hanging fruit in terms of the product itself, it really couldn't fail.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8685047, member: 82106"] Honestly, I don't think TSR really ever had much of a 'product strategy', certainly not before the advent of Williams. Different people within TSR birthed various products, based on a variety of reasons and expediencies, and perhaps just plain rivalry, and TSR sold them. If a product sold, they kept selling it until it didn't sell anymore, and then probably someone would suggest a revised version. I mean, HAD THEIR BEEN A PLAN, then Basic and Advanced D&D would almost surely have represented a pair of games which dovetailed cleanly together and where each one performed some sort of function within an overall product line. I think there were glimmerings of ideas of doing such things, but the company was really not organized or lead well enough to execute on a plan at all. Gary couldn't be bothered coming up with, or articulating, some product line going forward from the original game, so Holmes was off on his own somewhere creating Basic, which was a product that didn't really fit that well with what Gary was doing. I mean, maybe it would have, but Gary was too busy making up a whole new version of the game that didn't mesh with Eric's work at all. It would have made vastly more sense for Holmes work to have been a 1-3rd level intro to AD&D. It would have made more sense if Moldvay's efforts had been directed that way as well, but he was off working in some 'other TSR' that apparently was in love with the original rules and didn't care about whatever Gary's TSR was doing! Honestly, I think all that kept the whole enterprise going for as long as it did was just the fact that there was so much low-hanging fruit in terms of the product itself, it really couldn't fail. [/QUOTE]

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